Clinton’s money gaffes becoming a campaign hurdle

Opinion: Would-be candidate’s tone-deafness echoes in the media

WASHINGTON – The Clintons may soon prove that if voters are already angry with rich people, they can get particularly upset with nouveaux riches.

Hillary Clinton’s initial gaffe about the former first family’s fortune may have seemed like a speed bump on her road to the White House, but her repeated awkwardness on the subject is turning their wealth into a major hurdle.

After telling ABC’s Diane Sawyer earlier this month that she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” when they left the White House, the former first lady responded this week to a question from the Guardian about their fortune — estimated at tens of millions of dollars — by saying that they are not “truly well off.”

Reuters

Hillary Clinton

This patently ludicrous statement has been met with well-deserved derision.

But the full statement raises other issues. The question from Guardian reporter Ed Pilkington was whether their huge personal wealth would lead people to see them as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

“But they don’t see me as part of the problem,” Hillary Clinton replied, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.”

For good measure, Pilkington adds that the statement was followed by a burst of laughter that he has learned to interpret as a sign of discomfort.

The part of the statement most offensive to working-class Americans, however, may be “through dint of hard work.”

She no doubt means the crushing speaking schedule that former President Bill Clinton must keep in order to amass more than $100 million in fees, even at $200,000-plus a pop.

The fact that this no doubt entails first-class air travel, five-star hotels, and the partying that inevitably accompanies the former president may not strike Americans juggling two or three minimum-wage jobs as “hard work.”

Especially considering that those elevated fees trade partly on Clinton’s celebrity status as former president and partly as an investment in a future President Clinton — Hillary.

Chelsea Clinton has only exacerbated the situation after it emerged that NBC was paying the 34-year-old $600,000 a year for what was essentially a part-time job that produced little in tangible results.

“I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” the newspaper quoted Chelsea Clinton as saying in explaining how she resisted following her parents’ example. “That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life.”

When you’ve got that much money, you don’t have to care about it.

Hillary Clinton’s media blitz to tout her new book, “Hard Choices,” is clearly a dress rehearsal for a presidential campaign. At this rate, the show may never open.

Apologists for the repeated gaffes have pointed out that Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, not to mention the two Bush presidents, all were wealthy and that didn’t stand in their way (although arguably it helped tip the scale in the senior Bush’s failed re-election bid).

But these scions of wealthy families wore their privilege well. They didn’t pretend they weren’t wealthy or that they came by their riches “through dint of hard work.”

Other ex-presidents have made money writing books and giving speeches. Jimmy Carter says he has to write the occasional book to make a living. The younger George Bush wanted to “replenish the ol’ coffers” with speaking engagements, but he has not been that much in demand.

None, however, have so single-mindedly approached his ex-presidency as a path to wealth as Bill Clinton. The philanthropic efforts of the Clinton family foundation start to look like so much window dressing to mask this drive to amass a fortune.

It may be, as the apologists will have it, that Americans respect those who achieve the American dream and will look up to Hillary Clinton as someone to emulate in that regard.

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